Health anxiety returns after 3 years…feel defeated

[wingo22]

Hi,


I had my health anxiety under control. Winter of 2019 was my last episode where I feared a bad disease (turned out to be nothing) Last week something happened.

I had been feeling unwell for a couple weeks or so, had a cough, sore throat, slight fever. I fell asleep on the couch and around 1am I woke up feeling cold. I then went upstairs to bed and got under 1 sheet and 2 blankets. I awoke a few hours later sweating….the bed was wet under my chest and legs. I have never experienced this before. I managed to fall back asleep and woke up in the morning feeling fine. I instantly got a fear of lymphoma.

The past 4 nights I have gone to bed and awoken fine, no sweating but this has crippled me. I am afraid to go to bed now thinking I will wake up in a cold sweat again and get a rush of health anxiety.

Can this one episode be a symptom of cancer? I feel ok otherwise but this was one of my worries years ago. I don’t feel any enlarged lymph nodes either but I’m scared.
Any thoughts?

TIA

[ankietyjoe]

If you have a direct cause for the night sweats (fever, cough and sore throat) and then immediately start panicking about cancer, do you think you need to worry about the sweating, or the anxiety?

You need to work on your anxiety, not worry about a disease you don't have. If it's crippled you, it's because you're allowing it to. Challenge the thoughts, remind yourself you had a fever.

[ErinKC]

It sounds like you had the flu and now it's resolving.